Taiwan Part 3, plus more Hong Kong

Once again, I feel the need to finish the posts on a long-ago vacation because I want to post about a new one. I'm currently in Berlin and I'll try to write up a few posts on it in the next few days. For now, let me finish describing (to the best of my memory) the last few days of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Sunday started off just as miserably hot as Saturday, so walking around outside was very unpleasant. Nonetheless, Dana was a gracious host and took me around the city. Our first stop was the neighborhood of Ximending, a shopping district very popular with young people. The area is pretty much entirely pedestrian-only, which makes it a great place to stroll around.

We grabbed some yummy lunch in the form of a spicy variant of the popular local beef noodle soup:

After a few more hours of wandering around the neighborhood and stopping in various stores, we built our appetite up enough for more food, this time at a very famous restaurant named "Modern Toilet," which is themed around...toilets. You sit on toilets (with the seat down) and eat on tables mounted to bathtubs.

The food is served in various bathroom-themed vessels:

We spent the rest of the night shopping in a big underground mall (I forget the name, but I believe it is connected to the main train station) and eventually getting some delicious Taiwanese shaved ice. In the morning before my flight, we managed to drag ourselves out into the heat again to get a traditional Taiwanese breakfast, consisting of a donut-like thing, a savory pancake, and condensed milk.


My flight back to Hong Kong was unfortunately delayed several hours, so I didn't quite get the sightseeing time that I wanted. When I finally arrived, i checked into my "hotel." I'm hesitant to admit this because I know some people will be very concerned, but I stayed in the infamous Chungking Mansions, a densely packed complex with lots of hostels and guesthouses. The room was incredibly cheap and the place is in an excellent location, and these days the complex is actually very safe (and also I really like the movie Chungking Express). My room was comically tiny. It's hard to get a sense in this picture, but it was basically a closet with just enough room for a bed.

The bathroom was similarly small, with the shower head mounted over the toilet rather than having its own designated area. I was pretty pleased with my experience overall, though I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is even mildly claustrophobic. After dropping my stuff off, I hopped on the ferry over to the south part of the city, which gave me some awesome views of the city at night.

I walked over to the Causeway Bay neighborhood, where I was able to once again taste the amazing deliciousness that is Ichiran tonkotsu ramen:

It tasted just as good as it did in Japan. One of these days they need to actually open an American location like they keep promising! After dinner, I was able to squeeze in a little bit of nightlife and hit up a local craft brewery in the Central area, called Tipping Point. It was surprisingly good! I finally called it a night and headed back to my room to grab a little bit of sleep before my flight back to the States.

It was a really fun trip overall, especially due to Dana's willingness to be my guide around Taipei. I'll never forget the delicious food I had in both cities, and hopefully I'll get the chance to go back sometime (perhaps when it's not miserably hot and humid). Stay tuned for some posts about Berlin!

Taipei, Part 2

After a sleepy morning, we started Saturday with some pork rice from Formosa Chang:

It may not look super appetizing, but it's actually a really yummy traditional Taiwanese dish. Simple and good! After that, we started our trek towards Taipei Zoo, where we could hop on a gondola up the mountain to Maokong. The gondola ride was pretty incredible- we sailed over the trees and got some excellent views:

Also, our gondola had a glass bottom!

When we arrived at the top, we took a stroll down a little path lined with food vendors, and tried out some sausage on a stick:

We went over to a beautiful tea house that overlooked the city, where we had our own private tea room:

Dana was kind enough to do the whole tea ceremony thing for us and we enjoyed several cups of delicious tea (I think some kind of high mountain oolong?)

That's Taipei 101 in the background! We were able to get a really lovely video of the city as the sun was setting:

Once we were done with our tea, we headed back into the city and over to the Raohe Night Market.

I was able to try a ton of different snack foods there, including the infamous stinky tofu:

It actually wasn't too bad! The overall flavor was good, though it leaves kind of a gross aftertaste. And also smells a bit like garbage. I also tried a few other small things, including an amazing black pepper pork bun:

After lots of snacking and strolling, we decided to call it a night. Stay tuned for 1-2 more posts about Taiwan!

Taipei, Part 1

I'm once again horrible at writing posts in a timely manner, but here we go! I flew out of Hong Kong on Friday morning on Hong Kong Airlines and was delighted to find that I had for some reason been upgraded to first class. Since this was first class on an international airline, that meant a whole cubicle to myself with a seat that turned into a bed, unlimited wine, and excellent service.

 

This is probably the only time I'll fly in such an amazing seat, so I took a ton of pictures. The flight attendant thought it was adorable and helped me arrange my food to be more aesthetically pleasing:

There were also some lovely views of various islands as we made our way towards Taiwan:

The flight was unfortunately very brief (about 1.5 hours) and we soon landed in Taipei. My friend Dana was kind enough to meet me at the airport and escort me back to her place via the fantastic Shinkansen (high-speed rail, installed by Japan). Her apartment is in an amazing neighborhood just near the famous skyscraper Taipei 101:

We decided to start eating immediately, since I wanted to try everything Taiwan had to offer in less than 72 hours. Our first stop was Din Tai Fung, a very famous chain of dumpling restaurants that was started in Taipei. This place is famous for its perfectly crafted Xiao Long Bao, or soup dumplings. These things are absolutely incredible. I had 10 and I wanted many more.

They're essentially filled with pork soup and encased in a very delicate skin. The process of eating them properly is a little complicated, and involves carefully puncturing the skin, slurping the soup, then dipping them in a soy/vinegar sauce. Here I am failing at this and dropping my dumping in my sauce:

We finished off the meal with some very yummy taro dumplings for dessert:

Afterwards we went to the kitchen window and watched as the cooks very carefully prepared each dumpling, throwing out any that didn't meet their high level of perfection:

Afterwards we walked around the city a bit and stopped by a local night market. Night markets are an important part of Taiwanese culture, and typically include a wide offering of foods and goods.

The eating continued, and I got to try several little snacks. I apologize in advance for not knowing the name of anything I post here; I really just ate whatever Dana told me to! These "goo balls" were a yummy dessert, filled green tea, red bean, and a few other things:

Many stands offer a variety of vegetables and meats that you can get deep fried. I had deep-fried chicken hearts!

Afterwards we closed the night out by grabbing some beers and doing laundry at a laundromat. Taipei doesn't really have open container laws, which is great when you just want to relax in the extreme heat with a cold beer. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but the weather in Hong Kong and Taipei was HORRIBLE. Very hot (in the 90s during the day without much of a drop at night) and extremely humid. I felt sweaty and gross nonstop. Avoid visiting either of these places in the summer!

Hong Kong, Day 2-7

I'm back from my trip and more or less recovered from the jetlag and illnesses I brought back, so it's time to catch up on those blog posts! As I said, most of my time in Hong Kong was spent at a scientific conference, so my sight-seeing was kept to a minimum. The conference was held at HKUST, which is unfortunately far from the downtown area of HK but has some really great views. This was the view from my bedroom, for example:

On Tuesday a group of us managed to hop down to the nearby village of Sai Kung for some amazing seafood. It's a nice little village on the water:

We went to a restaurant where you choose your own fish and shellfish to eat from a variety of tanks:

We had an amazing feast of of fish, clams, abalone, prawns, and more:

A few days later I took a solo trip into the city to get lunch at the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world, Tim Ho Wan. Despite hearing stories about waiting hours to be seated, I was seated and served nearly immediately. The signature dish at this dim sum restaurant is cha siu bao, or BBQ pork buns. These really are incredible- they're slightly crunchy on the outside and filled with delicious, sweet BBQ pork:

 

The incredible thing about this restaurant (besides the amazing food) is how cheap it is. I enjoyed a very filling meal with a variety of dishes for only $10:

After the conference wrapped up in the evening, a bunch of us went back downtown to walk around the Temple Street night market. Though I didn't do much shopping, I did grab some yummy snacks and had a great time seeing the city at night. Afterwards we walked down to the harbour and went up to a bar on the 30th floor of a building overlooking the water. Pictures don't really do it justice, but it really was a spectacular view of the Hong Kong skyline at night.

Unfortunately the drink prices were crazy high and I had to be up early for my flight to Taipei, so we hopped in some taxis back to the university and called it a night. I have lots to say and show from my weekend in Taipei, so look for more posts in the next few days!

Hong Kong, Day 1 Part 2

As I said in the previous post, my sight-seeing had to stay very brief due to the fact that I needed to cross the city to attend a conference. Rather than going to the original lunch spot I had chosen (which didn't open for an hour), I opted to stumble into any place that looked yummy and welcoming. I did indeed find such a place, and the owners very kindly welcomed me in and advised me on what to order (in very good English). Since they specialized in noodles and fish balls (essentially just balls of processed fish), I got a soup with wide noodles, fish balls, and wontons.

It was super delicious. The noodles were a very lovely texture, though extremely hard to pick up with chopsticks. I think it took me about four times as long to eat my bowl as everyone else in the restaurant. I also had milk tea with my meal, which is a very famous beverage around Hong Kong. It's simply English black tea with milk, but it's quite yummy.

One thing that surprised me is that at casual establishments like this, you share your table/booth with other people. A young couple (locals) sat down with me and we ended up having a really great conversation about things to do in the city. They gave me some good tips on food and bars, with an emphasis on places that were most "legit" (that word is a great American export). I was additionally surprised that when I asked for a glass of water, I was given a glass of near-boiling water. It seems like it's very common to drink cups of hot water, likely because everyone boils the water that comes out of the tap and it takes a lot of effort to cool it.

Once I was full of noodles and fish, I hopped on the tram (once again, ridiculously easy to navigate) back to my hotel to pick up my bags and head to the nearby ferry station. The Star Ferry (which actually encompasses a number of ferry lines that cross Victoria Harbour) is one of those things that you're supposed to do while in the city, since it affords some pretty spectacular views of both sides and is affordable and efficient. After a short wait at the pier, our boat arrived:

The ferry had a very spacious upper deck that allowed me to get amazing views of Hong Kong Island as we made our brief trip across the water.

Once we arrived at Tsim Sha Tsui, I quickly made my way to the MTR station. After a very easy ride out to the Diamond Hill MTR station (where the conference people recommended we catch a taxi from), I thought I'd be getting to the conference with plenty of time to spare. However, I faced the very first language barrier of the trip when my taxi driver knew zero English and also didn't know where the university was. It was incredibly stressful and involved lots of phone calls and frantic pointing, but I eventually made it to HKUST right before the start of the conference. The location is lovely, albeit inconvenient:

And even though they have me in a very crappy little undergrad dorm, I can't complain because this is the view from my bedroom in the morning:

There probably won't be too much to report for a few days, since I'm mostly here to attend scientific talks. I'll update once I have some more pretty pictures!

Hong Kong, Day 1 Part 1

I am in Hong Kong! I'm at a conference for the week, so there won't be a whole lot to post on this blog, but I do have a little bit of sight-seeing to share with you. I arrived Friday night and the conference didn't start until Saturday afternoon, so I explored a bit on Saturday morning. My hotel was in the Wan Chai area, which put me in a good location to explore Hong Kong Island (the southern part of the city, which is separated by Victoria Harbour). I woke up bright and early and started the day off right with some delicious pastries from a nearby bakery. I managed to check off two of the items on my must-eat list by finding an egg tart and pineapple bun:

They were both crazy delicious. The pineapple bun has a very sweet, crunchy layer on top with a nice soft interior. After stuffing my face with food, I hopped on my first form of transportation that day, the tram:

These trams run across the length of Hong Kong Island and are quite historic. They're also an insanely cheap (2.3 HKD or about 0.35 USD for any ride) and fun way to get around, since you can sit on the upper deck and get a great view of everything. They are quite slow and crowded, though. I took this tram a few stops down to where I was able to walk to the beginning of the Peak Tram. This is a very old funicular system that goes up to the top of Victoria Peak:

 

There was a decent wait to board, since this is a very popular tourist destination and there is only one car that goes up and down the hill. The tram goes up the hill at an impressive speed and angle considering how low-tech it is. The top of the peak gives some of the most incredible views I've ever seen:

The other side of the peak, which faces away from the city, also has some quite lovely views:

Once I was done gawking at the scenery, I took the tram back down and had a lovely walk around the Central district. This is the historic center of the city from the British colonial days and is an awesome place to wander around. There are lots of little pedestrian-only streets filled with shops and food vendors:

The whole area is very lovely (though hilly) and a good way to kill an hour or two. Since I was on a tight schedule, I had to find a place to eat lunch and then quickly get all the way across the city to the conference. I'll actually save all of that for the next post since I have many more pictures to share!

Observations:

• Hong Kong is way more tropical than I thought it would be. I knew it would be hot and humid, but didn't think the humidity would be quite this bad. The heat itself actually isn't horrible, though. And somehow it hasn't rained since I arrived, which I hear is quite rare.
• People are very, very friendly and helpful. Nearly everyone speaks English incredibly well and is happy to help me find my way. 
• This city is ridiculously easy to navigate. All public transit announcements and signs are in English and everything is very intuitive. Things are way more clearer than pretty much any US city.
• Everyone is dressed way more casually than in Japan. I was in slightly fancy clothing due to the conference and I felt a bit out of place since most people were in jeans and shorts.